Other actors/directors/etc. who mention PTA

[wilberfan]

Marc Maron has an odd take on PTA during his conversation with Neil Patrick Harris this week.  I'm not sure I agree, and don't quite understand why Marc came to this particular conclusion.


[Don't know why this link won't start at 1:19:38--but that's the start of the tangent.  Marc asks him about Ricky Jay.]

The PTA segment (begins at 1:20:47):

MM: Have you ever talked to him? Paul Thomas Anderson?
NPH: No. I just read a whole article about him...
MM: He's a very goofy guy.
NPH: Really?
MM:  He grew up in the Valley... His dad was a whacky TV host from Cleveland or something...
NPH: That's right...
MM: And his dad and Tim Conway were best friends...
NPH:  No way...!
MM:  Yeah.  Like, I thought he was, like, some Dark Genius... He comes over here, he's just...goofy dude from the Valley.  And it's very entertaining to talk to him....
NPH:  So, what is a goofy dude like that...
MM:  Where does he get that stuff?  Why is he so fuckin'...  Maybe that's just his public persona--but he's obviously an incredible filmmaker.
NPH:  Phantom Thread?!
MM: He's got reall balls with the filmmaking. Like, he's not afraid of what's going to come at him.

[csage97]

Marc Maron has an odd take on PTA during his conversation with Neil Patrick Harris this week.  I'm not sure I agree, and don't quite understand why Marc came to this particular conclusion.


[Don't know why this link won't start at 1:19:38--but that's the start of the tangent.  Marc asks him about Ricky Jay.]

The PTA segment (begins at 1:20:47):

MM: Have you ever talked to him? Paul Thomas Anderson?
NPH: No. I just read a whole article about him...
MM: He's a very goofy guy.
NPH: Really?
MM:  He grew up in the Valley... His dad was a whacky TV host from Cleveland or something...
NPH: That's right...
MM: And his dad and Tim Conway were best friends...
NPH:  No way...!
MM:  Yeah.  Like, I thought he was, like, some Dark Genius... He comes over here, he's just...goofy dude from the Valley.  And it's very entertaining to talk to him....
NPH:  So, what is a goofy dude like that...
MM:  Where does he get that stuff?  Why is he so fuckin'...  Maybe that's just his public persona--but he's obviously an incredible filmmaker.
NPH:  Phantom Thread?!
MM: He's got reall balls with the filmmaking. Like, he's not afraid of what's going to come at him.

I think it's that Marc thought PTA would be very serious and less conversational than he is. PTA's films give off a sense of the literary (especially after The Master and IV, when Marc had him on the podcast) and can be narratively and "intellectually" challenging with a great level of craft, I suppose, so he possibly expected a person with a challenging intellect and wariness about the world.

Not that PTA isn't intelligent or knowledgeable, but he is very relatable, conversational, loves to joke, isn't serious all the time, loves funny movies, etc., so that's what I think Marc means by "goofy" (though goofy is a bit hyperbolic). I wouldn't really describe PTA as goofy myself, but I think it's Marc's way of saying that PTA's a lot more down to earth and funnier than expected.

[jenkins]

if one wants to learn about Tim Conway, he wrote and starred in Paul Bartel's The Longshot, and right there'll you'll learn about humor and characters and everything else. Robby Müller was the dp.

[Lewton]

I remember Amy Adams mentioning a similar experience. I think she had been expecting someone dour and "very, very serious" (quoting Dodd there, not Adams).

Still, I think Marc Maron's bafflement is kind of baffling. People are complicated. It doesn't seem that surprising to me that a serious filmmaker can also manage to be a down to earth fellow.

[wilberfan]

A nice interview with William H Macy over at The Ringer.


https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/4/20/17258738/william-h-macy-career-life-fargo-boogie-nights-shameless

Shortly after, you did Boogie Nights. How the hell did that movie get made?


More to the point: How did it get made with the subject matter? I mean, you know, a loving look at the porn industry. Imagine that. Paul had some juice going into this and it was the heyday of indies, so you could make money off an independent film. It was a good bet, but the first draft of the script that I read was X-rated. It was really graphic. It had a lot of sex in it. I wrote my agents and said, “Hold on. Am I being punked? Is this real?” And they said, “Yeah, he wants to meet with you.” So I watched Hard Eight.


It’s a good movie.


Oh my God, it’s great. Paul is a high-energy guy—really kind, really supportive, and fun. He likes to joke around. He has an indefatigable knowledge of film. He’s seen every movie ever made. You feel confidence with him, and that’s the biggest thing as an actor. I want to feel confident that the director is going to bring us home and do it with as little bloodletting as possible. As I’ve gotten older, I get cranky when we go over 12 hours. I want to know why. Is this planned and you didn’t tell anyone? Who screwed up?

[Tdog]

Joaquin Phoenix talking about PTA in a recent long form interview with Collider
http://collider.com/joaquin-phoenix-interview-paul-thomas-anderson-the-joker/#christopher-nolan

I know I’m almost out of time with you, so I have to ask you, I’m a huge fan, like everyone, of your collaborations with Paul [Thomas Anderson]. I’m just curious, what has it been like for you working with him? Do you foresee yourself working with him again in the future?

PHOENIX: He’s like someone that came, brought me this movie at this time in my career that it just couldn’t have been more perfect timing for me. I feel like I learned, so much of the experience taught me so much, and also working with Phillip [Seymour Hoffman], there’s just something so magical about that film to me, the experience of making that movie. I feel strongly about Paul. I have so much love and respect for him as a man and as a creative person. I feel like I don’t know, it’s just one of those moments where I wonder what kind of actor I’d be without that experience, without having worked with him. I hope that we’ll work together again. I don’t know. If I turn around in 20 years and I say I got to work with Paul twice, that’s … You know what I mean?

Totally.

PHOENIX: Fucking great. Yeah, of course, I’m fucking greedy. I would like to do it more, but if that’s all I got, I feel very fortunate to have had that experience.

[eward]

Please God let them team up again.

[Punch Drunk Hate]

 

[wilberfan]

Leon Vitali Talks About Stanley Kubrick and ‘Filmworker’ at Nuart Theatre

Vitali did share stories about Kubrick which involved him calling Vitali a certain word which has a broader meaning in England and Scotland but a simpler one in America as many find it extremely offensive (hint: it begins wit a c and ends with a t), and he also talked about the pie fight scene which was taken out of “Dr. Strangeglove” because they just felt it would have been a terrible way to end the movie. In terms of filmmakers today who Vitali considers in Kubrick’s league, he said he really admires Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo Del Toro because he gets back to the fairy tale part of the storytelling, and Sean Baker who directed “The Florida Project.” In terms of his favorite Kubrick movie, he said if you put a gun to his head he would have to say it is “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Source

[Punch Drunk Hate]

“I really like Paul Thomas Anderson a lot. I think he’s really good. Damn, is he good! Amazingly good! He really has command of narrative. Visual narrative. Really interesting. That’s one example. I love his films. Even though I don’t have any connection with what’s going on on the screen, he makes me.”

[eward]

Goddamn, imagine hearing John fucking Carpenter sing your praises?

[jviness02]

PTA and John C. Reily speak a little more about the improvs that inspired Reily’s character in Magnolia. PTA also credits Reily with figuring out how TWBB would end.

https://www.gq.com/story/john-c-reilly-profile

[ono]

They had fun. “On the way to Phil's house,” Reilly said, dropping into his dim, thick cop voice, “I would be like, ‘Apparently’—and I had the Oakleys on—‘this individual thinks they can play their music however loud they want. Well, I got news for them. There's a thing called the law.’ ” They'd improvise, Anderson catching it all on tape. The footage would eventually yield Reilly's lonely officer in Magnolia, but at the time, the exercise scratched a new itch. He was improvising seriously, but it was also deeply, stupidly, pee-your-pants hilarious, Hoffman faking a heart attack before sprinting away cursing. “It was really, really, really, really, really, really fun,” Anderson recalled.

Awesome.  Wish that would turn up someday.

I hate that throwaway line about CMBB though. Why not go into more detail about that?

[wilberfan]

Maya briefly discusses her "husband" in NY Times Magazine Interview.

Rudolph’s first child with the director Paul Thomas Anderson was born in 2005, an event she credits with making her a more productive cast member, because of its freezing effect on her personal life. Previously unmissable activities, like “socializing, and going out for” — she spilled into a Valley Girl shriek — “draaanks!” suddenly revealed themselves to be nonessential. But even with her newfound focus and an internal clock recalibrated for the topsy-turvy “S.N.L.” night-owl schedule, the pace was grueling for a new parent. Sometimes, on writing nights, Rudolph would put her toddler to bed, head to work until “between 6 and 9 in the morning” and come home just as she awoke. Rudolph left the show in November 2007, when her daughter was 2.


“It was too hard,” she said. “And nobody else understands or cares, when they don’t have kids. They’re like: ‘Oh, that’s cool!’ ” she said, turning away with a distracted nod. “ ‘What are you guys doing tonight?’ They’re like, ‘We’re going to see Justin Timberlake because Andy’s doing “Dick in a Box” with him! What are you doing?’ And I was like” — Rudolph affected the faraway stare of a revenant — “ ‘My daughter’s sick. I’m going home.’ ”


Members of the public familiar with the careers of Rudolph and Anderson react to their long-term relationship in one of two ways: Either they are surprised to learn that Rudolph and Anderson have been a couple since 2001 or they knew that but are surprised to remember it. Perhaps it’s that a high-minded film auteur would not seem to possess a wacky enough personality to pair with a woman who earned a living parodying Beyoncé from Destiny’s Child as “Britanica” from “Gemini’s Twin”; perhaps it’s that Maya Rudolph is not Daniel Day-Lewis. Often people’s response to the couple takes the form of jocular fetishization, as when New York Magazine’s The Cut published a short opinion piece titled “Paul Thomas Anderson and Maya Rudolph Are the Greatest Celebrity Couple,” affectionately citing, as a piece of evidence, an unsmiling candid paparazzi photo of them walking side by side. There have been instances, however, when the teasing has overreached and Rudolph has, like her parents, found her interracial relationship the object of prurient interest. She recalled a comedy writer who told her that her and Anderson’s children were “quadroons or octoroons” — “because people think that being aggressive is funny, I guess.”


Although they are not married, Rudolph refers to Anderson as “my husband” in conversation, as when a maître d’ told her that a man once introduced himself to the restaurant’s staff as “the unofficial mayor of the Valley” and Rudolph instantly blurted, “I hope it wasn’t my husband.” She said it felt “ooky” to keep referring to her long-term partner as her “boyfriend” after the birth of their daughter (they now have four children); she likes “husband” because “people know what that means. It means he’s the father of my child, and I live with him, and we are a couple, and we are not going anywhere.”

Full Source

[Punch Drunk Hate]

Before production began, however, she had to show the script to a director she's worked with before on films such as "Boogie Nights," "Magnolia," "The Master" and others: Paul Thomas Anderson.

"I call it the 'Papal Blessing,'" Walters said. "He, to me, is our best filmmaker. If Paul says go for it, then I go for it."

Full Article